


2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 5 cups of disaster

by Livesinbooks



Series: Festive Banana Fish Stories [2]
Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ash and Sing and Shorter are roommates, Ash is done with his friends, Christmas baking, Eiji and Yut-Lung are roommates, Gen, M/M, Sing has a crush on Yut-Lung, basically they're just normal people with normal lives and way less trauma, rated t for cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28028148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livesinbooks/pseuds/Livesinbooks
Summary: Shorter grabs milk from the fridge and screws it open. “How much? A splash should be good, right?”“No!” Ash yells and glares at Shorter. “Stick to the damn recipe or I’m throwing you out of the kitchen. No milk in this.”“Woah, don’t be so aggressive.” Shorter pouts impressively.“He wants to make sure everything is perfect for Eiji,” Sing mocks and sticks his finger into the bowl with the sugar and eggs.
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Shorter Wong, Ash Lynx & Sing Soo-Ling, Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji, Sing Soo-Ling & Shorter Wong
Series: Festive Banana Fish Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049189
Comments: 4
Kudos: 80





	2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 5 cups of disaster

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: baking
> 
> Enjoy!

Eiji and Yut-Lung are out buying Christmas presents together, so Ash, Sing and Shorter decide they should bake Christmas cookies until they’re back.  
Ash is studying the recipe book intently while Sing and Shorter bicker in the background.  
“Why can’t we make alcoholic ones?” Sing whines.  
“Because only Ash, Eiji and I are allowed to drink.”  
“In England I’d be allowed too.”

“We’re in America,” Ash deadpans, walking over to the fridge to grab eggs and butter.  
“Well it doesn’t make any sense why I can’t drink here, but on another continent I would be allowed.”

Ash slams the butter on the kitchen counter and turns to his startled friends.  
“There’s no actual alcohol in alcoholic cookies, you know that, right?”  
“What?” Shorter blinks.  
“It’s being baked. The alcohol is being baked away.”  
“Not sure if that’s correct physics, but it makes sense.”

“So we can make some?” Sing asks impatiently.  
“Why are you so set on this?” Ash studies him with narrowed eyes.  
Sing rubs his neck and looks away. Shorter’s curiosity visibly flares up.

“Oh, do tell us, little brother.”  
“It’s nothing. I just wanna know the taste of, like, rum or whatever.”  
“Liar,” Ash says and measures flour for the first cookies.  
“Tell us!” Shorter calls and starts poking Sing’s sides, tickling him.  
“Stop it,” he snaps and tries to flee the kitchen, but Shorter grabs his arm.  
“Tell us, tell us, tell us.”

Sing kicks Shorter’s leg and crosses his arms.  
“Fine! But leave me alone.”  
Shorter stops poking.  
“I want to pretend I’m drunk so I…” The rest of the sentence is being said too quietly for Ash to understand. Shorter, being closer to Sing, doesn’t have that problem.  
“You want to pretend you’re drunk so you can confess to Yut-Lung?” he all but yells. “Finally! But why do you have to be fake drunk for that?”  
“Well I wanted to be actually drunk for it… But if I can fake being drunk he can’t be mad at me for telling him.”  
“You want an out if he rejects you,” Ash realises. “That’s-” He’s about to say _cowardly_ , but Shorter interrupts him.  
“Super smart, I’ll remember that.”  
“If you want rum flavoured cookies you gotta help me.” Ash adds a cup of sugar to the bowl with the eggs.

“Right, okay.” Shorter grabs milk from the fridge and screws it open. “How much? A splash should be good, right?”  
“No!” Ash yells and glares at Shorter. “Stick to the damn recipe or I’m throwing you out of the kitchen. No milk in this.”  
“Woah, don’t be so aggressive.” Shorter pouts impressively.  
“He wants to make sure everything is perfect for Eiji,” Sing mocks and sticks his finger into the bowl with the sugar and eggs.  
“Did you wash your hands?” Ash asks, warning in his voice. Sing rolls his eyes and nods, then licks his finger.

“Sing! You can’t eat raw eggs!” Shorter calls and puts the milk down.

Ash pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s already so done with them. He should’ve just baked on his own.

“Do we have any rum extract?”  
“No, but I have actual rum in my room, wait.” Shorter dashes off and Ash decides not to ask why he keeps a bottle of rum in his bedroom. Living with Shorter and Sing is chaotic enough, he doesn’t want to ask about something he doesn’t really want an answer to.

When the first dough is done, Ash looks at the recipe again and frowns.  
“It says to refrigerate it for two hours.”  
“But they’ll be back by then.” Sing chews on his lip, then grabs the two plastic wrapped pieces of dough and opens the side of the fridge with the freezer, putting the dough in.  
“Two hours in the fridge equals half an hour in the freezer.”  
“Are you sure?” Ash studies the recipe again, but there’s no freezer option there.  
“Totally sure.”  
“Fine. Onto the next dough.”

Forty minutes later all the dough is done and they decide not to chill any of the others. It can’t make much of a difference.  
Their first dough is frozen solid, so Sing puts it in the microwave for a minute while they work on the other cookies.

Ash carefully uses the cookie cutter in the shape of a Christmas tree while Shorter just rips dough pieces off and rolls them in his hands, assembling something that looks like human figures. Sing just hovers nearby, watching.  
“What are you doing?” Ash asks, frowning.  
“Making all of us. The scowling one is you.” Shorter smirks at him and then ducks under the spoon Ash throws at him.  
Sing grabs a piece of dough and puts it in his mouth.  
“Stop eating it!” Shorter snaps, for the fourth time that day. “You’ll upset your stomach!”  
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Sing grabs an unbaked Christmas tree cookie and throws it in his mouth. Then the microwave beeps and he walks over to grab the cookie dough.

“Oh oh.”

Ash doesn’t even want to look in Sing’s direction.

“What?” Shorter asks.  
“I eh… Put the dough in the microwave to unfreeze it, right?”  
“Yes?”  
“I… forgot to take off the plastic wrap first.”

Sing opens the microwave and the smell of melted plastic fills the kitchen. Ash grits his teeth.  
“Don’t punch the kid, Eiji would get mad at you. Don’t punch the kid,” he mumbles, slamming the cookie cutter into the dough in front of him.

“I’m sorry, Ash,” Sing mumbles, sounding embarrassed, and it soothes some of his anger.  
“Whatever, just throw it away and open the window. We’ll clean it later. Then just preheat the oven to 350 degrees.”  
“Okay!” The kid sounds eager to do something right after this incident. Ash rolls his eyes and focuses on his cookie cutting again. Shorter has finished three of his figures, and begrudgingly Ash has to admit that they don’t look half bad. He actually recognises the Shorter cookie and the Yut-Lung one.  
The one that’s supposed to be him looks nothing like him, but that’s alright.

Another five minutes and they push the cookies into the oven.

“Six to nine minutes. Put the timer on six, we’ll check on them and see if they need longer.” Ash closes the recipe book and Shorter presses a few buttons at the oven and then nods.  
“Got it. Let’s watch half an episode of The Secret World of Santa Claus.”

\---

The episode ends, and Ash blinks.  
“Hold up, how long are the episodes?”  
“Like twenty minutes,” Sing says, “Let’s watch another.

Ash jumps up.

“I will murder you, Shorter.”

Then he dashes into the kitchen, Sing and Shorter close behind him.  
The timer on the oven reads 31:43, 31:42, 31:41.  
There’s smoke in the oven.

“You put the timer on one hour,” Ash says slowly, disbelieving. “And the temperature is way too high, too.”  
“Oh fuck,” Shorter mumbles and then steps forward, shutting off the oven and timer. They look at each other and finally Ash opens the oven door. Smoke blows into their faces and moments later the smoke detector starts blaring.

Ash opens the window while Sing climbs onto the kitchen counter to turn off the smoke detector. Shorter grabs one of his cookie humans, completely burnt, and looks at it.  
“I burnt all of us to death. And the trees too.”

“What the hell is going on here?” a familiar voice calls from the hallway, and then Yut-Lung steps into the kitchen, hands on his hips.

He looks back and forth between the three of them, Sing balancing on one leg on the counter, one hand on the smoke detector that’s finally stopped beeping, Shorter holding a piece of coal in human shape, and Ash leaning against the open window with an expression on his face that could kill someone - at least he hopes that it looks that way.

“Where’s Eiji?” he asks, trying to keep his voice neutral.  
“Still downstairs. I just came to grab someone to help us carry up the Christmas tree.”  
“I thought you just wanted to buy gifts?”  
“We found a nice tree that fits in your living room.”

Ash takes a deep breath.  
“I’m running to the store to buy cookies. Sing, you help them carry the tree. Shorter, clean the oven and microwave.”  
Shorter opens his mouth to protest, then he closes it again.  
“Fine, okay.”

Yut-Lung is grinning as they walk down the stairs of the apartment building together.  
“I’m just glad you decided to do this at your place and not Eiji and mine.”  
“I will push you down the stairs.”

“Be civil or I’m telling your boyfriend,” Yut-Lung warns, so Ash grits his teeth and behaves. He doesn’t want Eiji to get mad at him right before their first Christmas together as a couple.  
There’s not really a reason to be angry after all. Mistakes happen, as Eiji would say. And they didn’t burn down the apartment, so all is good…

He breathes deeply, and outside the building he wraps his arms around Eiji and kisses him.  
“I love you,” he whispers, and before Eiji can do more than smile at him surprised, he’s already walking down the street to get cookies from the store, humming quietly.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback would be appreciated 🥰


End file.
